Some of the most delicious pastries and desserts are coming out of a small basement kitchen in Oakland.

Greenhouse Bakery literally sells homemade baked goods from their basement kitchen in their green house. Rachel Caygill, an alumni of The Culinary Institute of America, has worked as a pastry chef at numerous restaurants before opting to run her own business. While her business started in 2018, I’d say her pastries and desserts became extremely popular last year once an article came out last fall.

Since she’s doing most of the baking alone (her husband who’s also a chef helps out), she does Saturday bake sales usually twice a month as well as advanced cake orders. Sometimes she does preorder pastry boxes on certain occasions but those sell out quickly. Once the article about her tiny bakery came out, the Saturday lines for her bake sales have been insane! They open at 10AM and even though we arrived around 9:20AM, there was already a line. We waited over an hour before entering their basement kitchen and I have heard that she sells out within a few hours.

Greenhouse Bakery.

Greenhouse Bakery.

Menu for the Day.

Her style is elevating nostalgic classic comfort sweets which highlight peak season produce.

Basement Kitchen.

Since we waited quite a long time, I ordered almost everything on the menu. I kind of wish I got one of everything!

Gorgeous Pastries and Desserts.

Close Up of Pastries.

We got three savory pastries: mushroom and creamed leek danish; sweet potato, chard, and goat cheese galette with chili; and garlic Cheddar monkey bread. I didn’t try the mushroom danish since I don’t like mushrooms but Tommaso loved it. I really liked the sweet potato galette with the chili oil. We also got a fig, pistachio and sour cream curd twist, pear crumb danish, orange almond cardamom bun (one of her signatures which didn’t disappoint), twice baked strawberry almond croissant, and brown butter glazed donut.

Close Up of Pastries.

The last few things we got were the honey pecan sticky bun, cinnamon roll, apple fritter, and passionfruit cream pie (amazing).

It’s almost mind blowing that Rachel makes all these wonderful sweets from inside her home. She’s often up at wee hours of the morning getting everything baked. To make hundreds of baked goods, some which are very labor intensive such as croissants, takes an incredible amount of hard work that most people don’t recognize. If you don’t mind waiting in line for some awesome sweets then definitely check out Greenhouse Bakery.